New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It • Hacker News Board

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#401

Post by madengr » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 1:31 PM UTC

devonkim wrote: post #190

povertyworld wrote: post #92

This is why I gave up on ever having a "real job". This thread inspired me to take a look at a job board and the first thing I saw was a mobile developer job listed as "entry level". Scrolling down, the requirements are 5 years minimum mobile development experience. This is entry level now? Five years experience? By the time I have five years experience working at some kind of theoretical pre-entry level job and fina…

There’s some cruel irony of you bringing up accounting for more stability when another poster in these comments said his father was laid off from an accounting job in his 40s and never found another job again. Modern work is brutal in the developed world and our institutions both government and market are failing at utilizing the wealth of human experience and knowledge available primarily for the sake of institution…

Had lunch with a friend yesterday, who told me his daughter and her her husband, both under 40, are now partners at their accounting firm. Household income of $480k in flyover country.

Maybe accounting is like bimodal legal salaries, you either make it to the top, or you are out.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#402

Post by scarface74 » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 1:38 PM UTC

fjsolwmv wrote: post #397

scarface74 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though I think ageism is overblown in the software development industry if you are buzzword compliant, I don’t take any chances. I leave everything off before 2008, my year of graduation and I go completely clean shaven and bald in an interview. (I’m Black it’s not abnormal). Most non-Blacks have no idea how old I am without the obvious signs of gray hair or a receding hair line.

White men can shave bald too, and anyone can dye their hair. There's even a famous hair dye brand that specifically advertises its product for use in gaming age doiscrimination! The product (Just For Men) and ads are gender-discriminatory, of course!

Isn’t being bald culturally more of a negative among White men?

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#403

Post by blub » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 1:42 PM UTC

4ntonius8lock wrote: post #108

Odd that in an article about age based discrimination, they don't mention that there is also age based discrimination against young people, for example, getting into C level positions in the non-tech world. When I used to be employed by other people, I specifically remember being told "we can't really promote you to director, you are too young". I wasn't inexperienced (I started working full time at 16). It wasn't th…

Age discrimination against young people is temporary and is not causing any major (or even minor) social problems. One literally just has to wait a bit longer while being gainfully employed.

On the other hand, older people can't get jobs and their livelihood + potentially the livelihood of their families is at risk.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#404

Post by vinceguidry » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 1:46 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #366

vinceguidry wrote: post #248

The way I look at it, when you work in tech, it doesn't take long for fields to become stratified. I've gotten turned down for a senior job for not having enough "agile experience." Really? Am you looking for an engineer or a project manager? I think every single programmer needs to be looking forward to the day where every single job move is at best a lateral one, so it's going to make more sense to move towards bus…

I was recently rejected for a job for not having enough “API experience.” I have been a backend engineer for 5 years. Regardless of whatever the hell “API experience” is supposed to be, my entire career has been designing, implementing, and calling APIs.

A recruiter gave me a great piece of advice, to ask the question towards the end of the interview, "is there anything that would cause you to think I'm not quite qualified for the position," this way you can get such concerns out in front and be able to address them while it's still convenient and before they reject you for it.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#405

Post by scarface74 » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 1:47 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #331

aiisjustanif wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, I’d also like to retire in less than 20 years Don't we all. > Food, utilities, insurance, car expenses (I don’t drive much, but it’s fairly essential for me to have a car to get certain places; it’s also paid off, fortunately) We all also pay for this. > probably $2000-2500/month Dude you still have $1000 probably free just chilling if you are strict. I don't get this, "you are not where you should be" mindse…

What if I told you I was 35? 45? 55? Does your perspective on “not where I should be” change given my already stated negative net worth? I’m old enough to be worried about being employable in this industry in 10 years. Do you not see how a 20 year time horizon for retirement, starting not from 0, but from -100k, is a source of anxiety? As for “doctor money”, according to https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2018-compen…

I know where you are coming from. Because of $bad_life_decisions until I was 35 and purposefully choices since then, I am behind financially by any objective measure.

You could say my career trajectory is behind being in my 40s and still being an individual contributor, but I don’t see any scenario where I would have wanted to be a person manager. (Been there done that. Went screaming back to an IC role).

But, I do see a narrow path where I can retire at the standard retirement age and be okay with a paid off house, enough savings to be okay, and hopefully social security between me and my wife collecting half of mine instead of her own.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#406

Post by blub » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #365

4ntonius8lock wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart hires old people as greeters. I'm sorry, you don't get to say "poor old people who get discriminated on" while at the same time saying "young people should be discriminated on" or "it isn't as bad if the shoe is on the other foot". Given the strong reaction I'm getting from mostly old people who want to see discrimination on the young (or at least are happy to justify it) I'm starting to see why the article d…

If we were talking about discrimination against a large number of young people, I would be singing a different tune. Privileged and well-to-do people seeking “justice” for themselves by comparing their situation to that of other people whose situation is really desperate is unfortunately all too common.

I just can't get over the fact that the parent poster derailed a thread about people not being able to get jobs - which is jeopardizing their retirement - only to complain about themselves being rejected for a CxO job in their youth.

Some really are blind to their privilege and arrogance.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#407

Post by wellpast » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #348

Youcandothis wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiring fairness sounds to me like the same as hiring for better outcomes and industry productivity.

I agree. Fairness in the sense of “equal ability to do the job results in the same outcome” would, indeed, get us there. The problem is that interviews don’t actually represent ability to do the job, not in this industry, at least.

They must to a significant degree or businesses would tank.

The (open) question is, can we do better?

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#408

Post by maxheadroom » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

Zenst wrote: post #227

luckydata wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to rock your world: almost nobody uses the keyword scanners in the ATSs. Sending a resume is mostly a waste of time, if you find a job you like just speak to someone that works at that company, preferably the hiring manager, and your likelihood of at least getting an interview goes up by about two orders of magnitude. Happy to teach you other tricks if you care for it.

As a 50+ chap, I had an instance of a top company, referred by friend, whole team up for it and to not even get an interview as I got `filtered` by HR and the recruitment process. Turns out they rejected me as I was `overqualified`. Equally in my early years pre PC mainstream days, there was an age bias towards older people. With many personal experiences upon that in that time/culture - including, believe it or not…

>Turns out they rejected me as I was `overqualified`.

I applied for a helpdesk position like this, once. Was required to take an IQ test and one of the questions during the interview was about what IRQ the keyboard was assigned to (you know, in the plug-n-play era, when IRQ and COM ports no longer were a "thing" to configure).

Got a response back, later, that I was overqualified.

I easily translated it to, "Wasn't willing to put up with our shit for so little pay."

Bullet dodged but there are some truly caustic employers out there, who will try to gatekeep every possible variance that they can think of, to keep the line toed[0].

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toe_the_line

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#409

Post by scarface74 » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #321

pmiller2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many employers do you find yourself needing to exclude because of the “no Leetcode” thing? Do you think you’re sacrificing anything in the way of comp by doing so?

I've got about 20 years of professional coding under my belt including a 5 year stint doing a lot of job hopping/consulting. I'd never even heard of leetcode until this post and won't bother to even visit the website. For most of my career I've been in the group giving interviews. I don't recall having ever seen it mentioned on a resume. It's a complete and total nothing for any employer I've ever worked for/with. Ba…

I’m using leetCode in the genericized sense of “Kleenex” instead of tissue or “Googling something”. Basically any algorithm style interview.

Don’t get me wrong, I can see if your company is solving hard problems (tm) or problems at a scale that has never been done before why you need smart people (tm). But I find it ridiculous that some companies care about how well you can do esoteric algorithms when they are hiring you to do yet another software as a service CRUD app or some internal bespoke app that will never see the light of day outside of the company.

I’m not even convinced knowing hard computer science is important in most jobs. One of the best developers I know graduated from a well known but not well regarded private for profit college. Didn’t know much hard computer science but he reads like crazy about best practices when it comes to writing software. His code and unit tests are things of beauty to maintain. We worked together at three separate jobs. He’s also in his mid 40s and he codes on his own time and does side projects like someone in their 20s.

I got my start doing assembly in the 80s as a teenager, bit twiddling C on x86 PCs and mainframes for a decade, but none of that matters when I am spending half my day as a “full stack developer” and the other half as the de facto “AWS Architect” (in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king).

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#410

Post by TheCoelacanth » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 3:31 PM UTC

madengr wrote: post #401

devonkim wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s some cruel irony of you bringing up accounting for more stability when another poster in these comments said his father was laid off from an accounting job in his 40s and never found another job again. Modern work is brutal in the developed world and our institutions both government and market are failing at utilizing the wealth of human experience and knowledge available primarily for the sake of institution…

Had lunch with a friend yesterday, who told me his daughter and her her husband, both under 40, are now partners at their accounting firm. Household income of $480k in flyover country. Maybe accounting is like bimodal legal salaries, you either make it to the top, or you are out.

Key word there is "partners". They aren't just accountants, they are also business owners. Any field can give a good income if you own a successful business.